Wishes - Georges Perec

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Résumé :

Twelve years of Georges Perec's annual pamphlets filled with homophonic wordplay

In the beginning was the pun, Samuel Beckett once wrote. And so it was that Georges Perec brought the good word to his friends and acquaintances on a yearly basis, as an expression of his best wishes for the New Year. Wishes gathers together these ten pamphlets of homophonic wordplay that Perec sent out from 1970 until his death in 1982, printed at his own expense in limited quantities. This paean to the pun consists of a series of short prose pieces, each concluding with a list of the everyday bits of language lying at their root. English proverbs, Latin phrases, the names of musicians, filmmakers, novelists and book titles are all fodder for Perec's homophonic translations: John Coltrane turns into an anecdote about a wanderer with a severe ring around the collar...

Biographie:
the phrase All's well that ends well becomes a pregnant cow named Alice hailed by a drunk Satan...

Sommaire:
Antonioni's first movie transforms into a prophecy of a murderous holiday...